In an Ethernet local area network, which one of the following statements is **TRUE**? (A) A station stops to sense the channel once it starts transmitting a frame. (B) The purpose of the jamming signal is to pad the frames that are smaller than the minimum frame size. (C) A station continues to transmit the packet even after the collision is detected. (D) The exponential backoff mechanism reduces the probability of collision on retransmissions.

Evaluating the given statements about CSMA/CD in Ethernet:

• (A) is False: In CSMA/CD, a station continues to sense the medium while transmitting in order to detect any collision.

• (B) is False: Frame padding is used to ensure the frame meets the minimum frame size. The purpose of a jamming signal is to alert all other stations on the network that a collision has occurred so that they discard the fragment.

• (C) is False: Once a collision is detected, the station immediately aborts the transmission after sending a brief jamming signal.

• (D) is True: The binary exponential backoff algorithm dynamically increases the contention window $[0, 2^k - 1]$ with each successive collision (up to a limit), thereby spreading out retransmission attempts among colliding stations and significantly reducing the probability of repeated collisions.